Chapter Text
The first sign that something was wrong was the silence.
It wasn’t complete silence, there was never silence in the halls of Ithaca anymore. There was always laughter, shouting, drunken singing, the scrape of goblets over stone floors. The palace had become loud in Odysseus’s absence and greedy men filled empty space easily.
But this silence was different.
It fell suddenly with a sharp absence, as if the world itself had inhaled.
Penelope looked up from her loom to see that every suitor in the hall had gone still.
A half-finished boast died on Antinous’s lips. Eurymachus slowly lowered a goblet from his mouth. Somewhere in the kitchens, a servant dropped a plate with a crash that echoed unnaturally through the quiet halls.
Then, the torches flamed blue.
Several men stumbled to their feet, the long peaceful lull they’d grown accustomed to in her home hard to adjust from.
“What trick is this?” one of the younger suitors demanded, his voice wavering despite the bravado.
Penelope did not answer. Her fingers tightened around the shuttle in her hands.
The air felt heavy.
Charged.
Like the moment before lightning split the sky.
Telemachus rose from his place near the wall, instinctively reaching for the dagger at his side. He always looked younger when he was frightened. Too much like the boy she remembered clinging to Odysseus’s leg before Troy had stolen him away.
Eurymachus recovered first, as he often did. “Well,” he drawled, leaning back into his chair with practiced ease, “if the gods have finally come to smite Antinous for his manners, I can only say it was overdue.”
A few nervous laughs rippled through the room.
Antinous sneered. “Careful. Wit is dangerous in a man with no spine.”
“Better no spine than no brain.”
Normally that would have sparked another argument.
Tonight, neither man finished it.
The palace shook. Not violently, not enough to throw anyone down. Just enough for every goblet on every table to rattle at once.
The servants began muttering desperate, fear-filled prayers under their breaths.
Penelope stood slowly, watching as the blue flames bent inward towards the center of the hall and the shadows there deepened. Not naturally. Not like darkness born from absence of light.
This darkness moved.
It stretched upward like rising smoke, twisting higher and higher until it touched the ceiling. An earthy smell of dirt filled the room, dusty and rich and completely out of place in the room full of finery.
Then, the shadows split open.
The suitors recoiled.
One outright screamed.
And a figure stepped through the darkness.
He was tall. Beautiful. Terrifying.
The traveler’s cloak, the winged sandals, the amused smile sharp as a knife—
Hermes.
God of travelers.
God of thieves.
God of lies.
Every person in the hall dropped immediately to their knees except Penelope. Odysseus’s stories of Athena so common in her mind, she certainly wasn’t accustomed to the divine. But she was strong enough, or perhaps foolhardy enough, to stand her ground.
Hermes glanced around the room with visible delight. “Oh, excellent,” he said. “You’re all awake. Makes this much easier.”
No one replied.
Hermes clicked his tongue. “Oh, come now. You mortals used to be more fun about divine appearances. There should be screaming. Crying. At least one dramatic fainting spell.”
One of the suitors fainted directly onto the floor.
Hermes brightened. “Ah. There we are.”
Telemachus swallowed hard, her heart beat faster as she recognized his tell. He continued to speak regardless of her silent pleas to stay quiet. “Lord Hermes… why are you here?”
Hermes tilted his head toward him. “You have your mother’s caution,” he mused. “And your father’s unfortunate tendency to ask questions he won’t enjoy the answers to.”
At the word father, the entire room shifted.
Penelope felt it.
Even now, after twenty years, Odysseus’s name still carried weight in Ithaca.
Hope for some.
Fear for others.
Annoyance for Antinous.
The suitor in question rose slowly to his feet, jaw tight with forced courage. Antinous was handsome in the way sharp weapons were handsome: polished, dangerous, and designed to intimidate. Broad-shouldered and proud, he carried himself like a man already convinced the throne belonged to him.
“My lord,” Antinous said carefully, “if this concerns Ithaca’s succession—”
Hermes barked out a laugh. “Oh, you poor thing.”
The words dripped with pity.
Antinous stiffened.
Hermes began pacing through the hall like he owned it, which, Penelope supposed, gods often assumed they did.
“The Olympians,” Hermes announced, “have encountered a disagreement.”
“A disagreement?” Eurymachus echoed.
Unlike Antinous, Eurymachus rarely pushed directly. He preferred charm. Softer smiles. Friendly voices hiding sharp instincts beneath them. Penelope trusted him less than Antinous precisely because he knew how to seem kind. She had been sad to see her son disregarding the warning signs that appeared, but now, she was more worried that they outlive this encounter than anything to do with the men inhabiting her walls.
Hermes pointed at him approvingly. “Yes! See, this one listens.”
Eurymachus looked deeply unhappy about the compliment.
“The disagreement,” Hermes continued, “concerns one Odysseus of Ithaca.”
The hall erupted immediately.
“Odysseus?”
“He lives?”
“The king—”
“Impossible!”
Penelope’s heart stopped.
Not metaphorically.
Not poetically.
One moment it beat.
The next it simply…didn’t.
Because after twenty years, hope had become dangerous. Carefully cultivated numbness was the only thing that had allowed her to survive.
Hermes watched the chaos with delight.
Then he snapped his fingers and the noise vanished instantly.
It wasn’t quieted. Simply gone.
Every mouth still moved. Men shouted soundlessly at one another in growing panic.
Hermes sighed.
“This,” he informed the room, “is why Athena usually handles the clever heroes.”
Another snap and sound returned all at once.
“—alive?”
“—never should’ve gone to Troy—”
“—my king—”
Penelope spoke over all of them. “Is my husband alive?”
Everything stopped again, this time with a slow drawl of reluctance rather than godly interference.
Hermes looked at her differently than he looked at the others. More carefully.
“Ah,” he said softly. “There’s the important question.”
For one terrible moment, Penelope thought he would refuse to answer.
Then the trickster smiled, “Yes.”
The world tilted.
Somewhere beside her, Telemachus made a strangled sound.
Alive.
Alive.
After twenty years of silence.
After wars and storms and grief and slowly unraveling hope.
Alive.
Penelope sat down abruptly, her knees no longer working to support her.
The suitors, meanwhile, looked horrified.
Hermes noticed immediately. “Oh, don’t look so frightened,” he said brightly. “Well. Most of you.”
Antinous recovered first. “If Odysseus lives,” he started carefully, “why has he not returned?”
Hermes’s smile sharpened. “Ah,” he said. “That would be the disagreement.”
The shadows behind him stirred again.
This time, more figures emerged.
A woman cloaked in gray stepped soundlessly into the hall.
Athena.
The temperature seemed to drop with her arrival. Unlike Hermes, she did not smile.
Her gaze swept across the room, cold and devastatingly intelligent, it lingered briefly on Telemachus before moving on.
Several suitors immediately looked like they regretted every life choice they had ever made.
A second figure appeared behind her.
He was massive and sea-soaked with eyes burning like the heart of a storm.
Poseidon.
Half the hall fell flat against the floor in terror.
The sea god looked deeply unimpressed by mortals as a concept.
“Well,” Hermes muttered, “there goes the friendly atmosphere.”
“You summoned them already?” Poseidon rumbled.
“Efficiency is a virtue.”
“You are not virtuous.”
“True! But I am efficient.”
Athena ignored both of them. “Enough delays,” she said.
The shadows expanded once more and the dead walked through them.
Penelope inhaled sharply.
Some she recognized only from old stories told by Odysseus before Troy.
Others she knew instantly.
Eurylochus looked exactly as she remembered: wary eyes, tense shoulders, the posture of a man permanently expecting disaster. Older than Odysseus by only a few years, but somehow wearier by decades.
Behind him came a broad, smiling man with kind eyes Penelope recognized from a hundred fond retellings and even more personal memories.
Polites.
The friend Odysseus had once described as “the best of us.”
The smile faded quickly as Polites took in the room.
Then more emerged.
Soldiers and crewmen and spirits she could never hope to name.
Dead men dragged from the Underworld itself.
The hall descended into terrified chaos.
One suitor bolted for the doors.
Poseidon flicked two fingers lazily and he slammed into an invisible wall.
Hermes winced. “Bit dramatic, Uncle.”
“You invited drama.”
“Fair.”
Telemachus stared openly at the dead. At Eurylochus. At all of them.
Eurylochus looked equally unsettled to find himself standing in Ithaca.
Then his gaze landed on Penelope.
Awkward understanding crossed his face. It wasn’t guilt exactly, but something near it.
Polites noticed her a second later. “Oh,” he said quietly. There was a heartbreak in that single word that she couldn’t decipher before being forced to move on in her thoughts.
Athena stepped forward. “The story of Odysseus,” she declared, “has become disputed among Olympus.”
Poseidon snorted. “Your favored mortal became a butcher.”
“He survived.”
“He destroyed everyone around him.”
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd.
Eurylochus’s jaw tightened and Polite’s face collapsed.
“He endured trials no mortal should have survived.”
“And became monstrous in the process.”
The room went still.
Monstrous.
The word hung heavily in the air. Penelope shivered softly.
Hermes clapped once. “Which,” he announced cheerfully, “brings us to tonight’s entertainment.”
“No,” Athena corrected sharply. “This is a judgment.”
Hermes considered. “Judgment can be entertaining.”
Athena ignored him, “You will witness the journey of Odysseus from Troy onward.”
The hall erupted again.
The crew looked horrified.
The suitors looked confused.
Telemachus looked desperate.
And Penelope? Penelope couldn’t breathe properly.
Poseidon smiled for the first time, it was a terrible thing to witness as his maw opened to reveal teeth curved and gleaming with shipwrecks and mutilated corpses hidden within like a twisted game of find the horror.
“You will see,” the sea god said, “what became of your king.”
Antinous crossed his arms. “And if we refuse?”
Poseidon looked at him.
Just looked.
Antinous paled instantly.
Hermes leaned toward him conspiratorially. “Tiny piece of advice,” he whispered. “Never challenge the god who drowns cities over hurt feelings. In fact, maybe just leave the challenging of gods to the gods themselves.”
Athena raised one hand and the palace around them vanished.
The scream that tore from several throats echoed into endless darkness.
Then came light.
Golden.
Massive.
And blinding.
An amphitheater unfolded around them.
Marble steps stretched impossibly high. Torches burned with celestial fire. The night sky above churned with stars that moved too quickly to be natural.
At the center was a stage. No, not a stage. An ocean. A mirror of water with a surface that shimmered like polished glass, reflecting scenes that had not yet fully formed.
Penelope stared at it helplessly.
Athena’s voice rang through the theater. “You will watch.”
Hermes flopped carelessly into one of the higher seats.
“You will not interfere.”
Poseidon took a throne formed from black seawater.
“You will witness the truth.”
The dead crew exchanged uneasy glances.
The Olympians appeared above them, each seating themselves in their respective thrones. Zeus surrounded as if in the eye of the storm and Hades by the cries of the dead only two notable descriptions she saw.
In all truth, the sheer pressure of the divine was weighing on her mind, forcing herself to accept the reality driving her to the brink of madness already. Imagining spending any amount of time with their presence at all amplified was enough to give her nightmares while awake.
The suitors clustered together instinctively now, confidence visibly cracking.
Antinous still tried to look defiant.
Eurymachus looked thoughtful.
One of the younger suitors whispered, “What happens after?”
No one answered him.
Then, finally—
Images began to appear.
A ship appeared upon in front of them, black sails stark against a crimson dawn.
And standing at the helm was Odysseus.
The entire theater stopped breathing.
Penelope stared at her husband for the first time in twenty years.
He looked younger there.
Not untouched.
Not unbroken.
But still recognizable.
Still hers.
Beside her, Telemachus whispered something that sounded painfully close to “Father.”
On the other side of the theater, Polites closed his eyes.
Eurylochus looked away entirely.
And Poseidon smiled like a gathering storm.
“Let us begin,” Athena said.